F1 2019 Will Feature Microtransactions — Including Items Only Available Via CashF1 2019

[Imari]

Even in the cases where the CEOs keep their jobs they still accept the responsibility of high level failures and are tasked with fixing them.

Seems like pretty high job security if the options are do well and get paid lots, or do poorly and get paid lots to fix your own failures. I'm not sure I'd call that responsibility, I think that's more like being able to do whatever you like and still not get fired.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-29-nintendo-boss-iwata-halves-pay-miyamotos-wage-cut-too

Nintendo bosses are some of the few I've seen taking personal responsibility for the failures of the company. Andrew Wilson, Bobby Kotick, Strauss Zelnick, Todd Howard and such are happy to voice how seriously they take their responsibility, but they certainly seem to make sure that someone else pays the price. Words don't necessarily match up with actions, and you can say that you're taking responsibility until you're blue in the face, but it doesn't necessarily make it so.

On the other hand, when people lose their jobs as the result of a failed game, that's very directly them being forced to accept responsibility. Which may in some cases be entirely appropriate, but in general I'd say that your risk of being forced to accept consequences is far higher as a random dev than as a CEO. Absolute worst case, a CEO "resigns" with a favourable deal in order to not subject to company to legal exposure. They're hardly at risk of losing their house, or being unable to take care of their family because they don't have a job for a while. Meanwhile, the devs at the coal face probably don't have million dollar salaries to hoard and invest, and losing their income is potentially very, very damaging.

CEOs and the like can be responsible for a lot of how a company performs. Unfortunately, in the current economic system (and this doesn't just apply to games but to all industries) it seems pretty uncommon for even bad CEOs to face consequences that would actually impact them in a meaningful way. Numbers are just numbers, and losing a million dollars can sound like a lot to most of us, but if you're earning $30+ million a year I assure you that it's not worth losing sleep over.

 

[Moglet]

Seems like pretty high job security if the options are do well and get paid lots, or do poorly and get paid lots to fix your own failures. I'm not sure I'd call that responsibility, I think that's more like being able to do whatever you like and still not get fired.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-29-nintendo-boss-iwata-halves-pay-miyamotos-wage-cut-too

Nintendo bosses are some of the few I've seen taking personal responsibility for the failures of the company. Andrew Wilson, Bobby Kotick, Strauss Zelnick, Todd Howard and such are happy to voice how seriously they take their responsibility, but they certainly seem to make sure that someone else pays the price. Words don't necessarily match up with actions, and you can say that you're taking responsibility until you're blue in the face, but it doesn't necessarily make it so.

On the other hand, when people lose their jobs as the result of a failed game, that's very directly them being forced to accept responsibility. Which may in some cases be entirely appropriate, but in general I'd say that your risk of being forced to accept consequences is far higher as a random dev than as a CEO. Absolute worst case, a CEO "resigns" with a favourable deal in order to not subject to company to legal exposure. They're hardly at risk of losing their house, or being unable to take care of their family because they don't have a job for a while. Meanwhile, the devs at the coal face probably don't have million dollar salaries to hoard and invest, and losing their income is potentially very, very damaging.

CEOs and the like can be responsible for a lot of how a company performs. Unfortunately, in the current economic system (and this doesn't just apply to games but to all industries) it seems pretty uncommon for even bad CEOs to face consequences that would actually impact them in a meaningful way. Numbers are just numbers, and losing a million dollars can sound like a lot to most of us, but if you're earning $30+ million a year I assure you that it's not worth losing sleep over.

And again, I'd be willing to bet those figures are not representative of most games studio CEOs, just the ones that make the news because of how insane their pay is or how ridiculously elevated they become. In those cases the kind of money being made is insane and I would agree that microtransactions can become greedy.

When it comes to other devs I know of 3 games studio CEOs personally:

• 1 of them ended up closing down multiple studios and accepted huge personal financial losses
• 1 of them sold his house and then re-mortgaged his next house to save the company
• 1 of them has multiple responsibilities outside of the CEO role and never stops working

Codemasters are nowhere near the level of the studios where the CEOs earn $30 million+ a year. Microtransactions are profits, and those go into the studio and producing future titles.

 

[jake2013guy]

• 1 of them sold his house and then re-mortgaged his next house to save the company

Didn't Ian Bell do that post-Shift or something like that? We're probably both thinking of IB. It's just similar to something I've heard.

 

[Moglet]

Didn't Ian Bell do that post-Shift or something like that? We're probably both thinking of IB. It's just similar to something I've heard.

I'm not sure if Ian Bell ever did anything like that, he's not the person I'm thinking of. It's not unheard of though, especially with people who started the studio from nothing.